If you are someone who is in the middle of a job hunt chances are that you have heard the question 'What has the pandemic taught you?' at least once. Anindita Das isn't looking for a new job, but if someone were to ask her this question, she would most tell them, 'I will tell you what I taught the pandemic'. The title of this advertiser-turned-author's first book is along this very line, What the pandemic learned from me. The book is a collection of open letters that Anindita wrote every day during the first lockdown, in 2020, to people, places, things, memories and all things associated with her. From house plants to books to even groceries, there is an open letter for everyone and everything, with a dash of humour and some food for thought.
"I started writing these letters when I was cooped up inside my house during the pandemic. On some days, I would find myself with a lot of time on my hands, that's when I thought of writing something other than ad copies that I do day in and day out," says Anindita, who lives in Bengaluru.She works as a Creative Director at Wunderman Thompson Bangalore. The Indian Institute of Mass Communication graduate adds that she finds writing to be therapeutic and that it helped her get through some of the boredom and loneliness that the lockdown brought along.
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The 111-pager is a light read and the author says that it helps lighten the mood of her readers who are struggling to get through this newfound anxiety. "I kept writing letters but they were all for my own consumption. At one point, I decided that I should publish these letters as a book, rather than keep them to myself. I had to do it soon as these letters would lose their relevance once the pandemic was over," she says. This prompted her to self-publish the book. "The pandemic caused its own delays, but I managed to get the book out relatively soon," she says. While she initially started during the beginning of the lockdown for fun, she soon set her own deadline and wrote a total of 18 chapters.
The response to the book has been great so far. She has been using social media to promote her book and she is loving this new author-life Readers have reached out to her to tell her that the light-read is just what they need to get through the lockdown. "I always wanted to write fiction. I will probably start working on that soon," says Anindita.